Big things have always come The 1975‘s way, but they don’t come much bigger than headlining a sold out Madison Square Garden. The iconic New York venue played host to the Wilmslow band on Thursday (June 1) and, as you’d expect, they rose to the challenge mightily.
Ever champions of new artists, they brought fellow Mancunians Pale Waves along for the ride, who can now lay claim to their first ever New York show being at the Garden. Impressive stuff. Even more impressive were The 1975 themselves, well into their stride on their arena reign and getting perfectly in gear to end the campaign around their ambitious second album ‘I Like It When You Sleep For You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware Of It’ at July’s Latitude Festival in style.
1The 1975 at Madison Square Garden
The second the band stepped out on stage, the 20,000 capacity venue was filled with Beatlemania-level screams. As the stage lit up pink, the band launched into now-customary set opener ‘Love Me’.
2The 1975 at Madison Square Garden
“This was not supposed to happen,” Matty Healy told the adoring audience after ‘A Change Of Heart’. “This is fucking mental.”
3The 1975 at Madison Square Garden
The band’s setlist was made up of a mix of tracks from ‘I Like It When You Sleep…’, the group’s self-titled debut album and their early EPs.
4The 1975 at Madison Square Garden
Even though the band are a year and a half into touring their second album, they still had room for some surprises.
5The 1975 at Madison Square Garden
The gig marked the first occasion they had performed ‘The Ballad Of Me And My Brain’, one of ‘I Like It When You Sleep…”s standout tracks.
6The 1975 at Madison Square Garden
“I wanna feel like the people in the room,” Matty said at one point, taking his in-ear monitors out to bask in the sound of the crowd. “That’s pretty fucking good, especially for New York,” he said of the huge roar.
7The 1975 at Madison Square Garden
The frontman also took the time to perch on the edge of the stage and address the crowd properly. “Stop pushing each other and listen to me,” he instructed them at the start of his speech.
8The 1975 at Madison Square Garden
“Every time I see something interesting or beautiful, I feel like I need to document that experience to share it with other people and therefore validate that experience,” he said, before telling the crowd to put their phones down. “If we’re all just people in a room, the memory of the next three minutes will be far better than a video on your iPhone.”
9The 1975 at Madison Square Garden
The band closed the main section of the set with ‘Girls’ and ‘Sex’, before leaving the stage for the encore.
10The 1975 at Madison Square Garden
After a short break, they returned to play ‘Medicine’, ‘If I Believe You’, ‘Chocolate’ and a particularly jubilant ‘The Sound’, which had the whole venue jumping for a euphoric close.